Disk clone difficulty

I recently purchased a SFF PC that has only one 10GB HDD and no room or provision for a second HDD. I used ATI to clone my 10GB HDD to a Patriot 16GB USB Pen Drive, intending to clone the USB drive info onto a spare NTFS formatted 40GB HDD on another PC. Everything appears to go fine 'till the last second of cloning my USB drive to the spare 40GB HDD. The message 'copying MBR is shown, followed by -

Failed to read from the sector 63
Failed to read from the sector 65
Failed to read from the sector 66

The SFF PC has a registered copy of W2K, my other PC has a registered copy of WinXP Home. I tried formatting the Patriot 16GB USB drive in FAT32 and NTFS before starting with the manual method of cloning.

Any help appreciated (or another way of achieving) as the IBM SFF PC 10GB HDD is old and was hoping to use my newer HDD in it's place without having to format/reinstall the Win2K O/S

Ray
EDIT - Since posting, I used Disk Management, gave the 40GB HDD the next drive letter and all the info from the Patriot USB drive appears to be in order. I turned off the PC and removed the HDD but not sure, after those read errors, if I should risk the drive in my SFF PC. I was about to upgrade my version 11 ATI but will that be any help with the read error problem please

 

Ray,

Just to clear up some terminology. Were you cloning or imaging? From Windows or the Acronis TI boot CD?

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#14

 

I was cloning Brian. In the past, I have cloned many HDD's without problem but they have all been done within the PC involved. I had an important HDD fail on me, some years ago and tended to replace old drives to use them in less critical systems.

This small Desktop has no room for another HDD and the IDE drive cable has no provision for a slave HDD, so using a 16GB USB drive, I was hoping to use the cloned 10GB drive that was now on the USB drive, then clone that info to a spare IDE HDD that was on another PC. I could then replace the original, very old 10GB HDD on my SFF Desktop.

My other option was to replace the IDE ribbon cable with one that has a slave connector but with the Desktop being so small, my old eyesight may not be up to that now.

Ray

 

You may want to try creating an Entire Disk Image of the 10GB drive and save it to the flashdrive. Then install the 40GB drive and restore the image to it.

This problem may be because of using a flashdrive. They are not seen as "normal" hard drives.

Another thing to try is to disconnect any other drive devices not necessary when you try to clone. For example, disconnect any media card readers, iPODs, printers with media card slots, etc. If the computer has a floppy controller and no drive, make sure the floppy controller is disabled in the BIOS.

Getting a sector read error with TI isn't always from one of the drives or devices you might think.

Lastly, if you've been using either TI in Windows or TI's Full (Linux-based) version from the CD, you could try the Safe Mode/Media version. The Safe Mode version will usually treat flashdrives as hard drives since they are accessed through the BIOS.

 

Ray,

This is what I'd do.

 

Many thanks MudCrab for your help. I had created an entire Disk Image to another flashdrive and a HDD on another PC before I cloned, using TI Windows, to the Patriot flashdrive but have never tried safe mode. The Desktop is only fitted with a floppy drive, CD ROM and Network link, no Printer or anything else, as the PC is only used for Internet use.

I was not aware I could use an entire Disk Image to restore to a replacement larger HDD, so if the safe mode fails to clone correctly, via flashdrive, then I will try what you and Brian suggest - use the saved entire Disk Image I have, to copy back to the new 40GB HDD.

The only reason I like using the Desktop for Internet use, was to save on the electric bill as my two working systems use 700+ Watt's to run. Being retired and suffering the after effects of two Strokes, my system building interest has taken a knock. http://shepsshed.com/pcbits.htm

Thanks again for all your help, much appreciated.

Ray

 

I cold booted the Desktop PC, with the Acronis boot CD in the CD ROM Drive and when the ATI CD started, the Patriot USB drive was not shown as a disk for cloning purposes, although oddly enough, it was shown as a location to place an image.(networked PC HDD's were also shown but not the CD/DVD drives) I carried on from the Windows start location on the ATI CD menu into Windows safe mode and the Patriot USB drive was shown as a disk to clone to, so after cloning I plugged the Patriot USB drive into another spare PC and cloned the USB drive to the free, formatted HDD. Exactly the same trouble, a second from the end, the copying MBR message came up, then the 3 read errors. I guess the entire image method is the only route to go now.

Ray

 

You were in the Full Mode version of TI not the Safe Mode version.

Sorry if this wasn't clear. I didn't mean to use the Safe Mode of Windows, I meant to boot from the TI CD and start TI's Safe Mode version. If you don't have the Safe Mode version on the TI CD, you'll need to create a new one using the Acronis Media Builder program and include it.

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While I still think that going the image/restore route is the best way, I curious if the Safe Mode version of TI will allow the clone to be successful. Even if it does work, there's no guarantee that when you try to clone from the flashdrive to the new hard drive that that will work (especially if the drive geometry is detected differently).

 

I will certainly give that idea a shot MudCrab. I use a registered download version of TI version 11.0.8101 but all the versions of ATI that I have used over the years, I can't ever remember seeing a safe mode version to add to an ATI boot disk.

I just made another boot disk, using the USB flash drive, as the PC only has a CD ROM drive and will place the boot data from the flash drive on a CD/DVD writer CD, using another PC. I only saw the option for ATI Home Full Version and drive cleaner and as usual, I went for the full version, with all boxes ticked. The only thing I can think of - I must have missed the safe option when I booted the first ATI Boot disk.

Will give it another go and see what happens, only this time I formatted the flash drive in FAT 32 not NTFS as previously used.

Ray

 

For TI 11 and later, you need to log into your Acronis account and download and install the Safe Mode/Media addon. Then you'll have the option to include it on the TI CD.

 

Thanks...explains the reason I have not seen the safe mode option although can't remember it in previous versions either

Ray
PS - In business with the safe mode now an option so burning a boot disk and will give the clone operation another go.

 

Cold booted with the new safe mode ATI boot disk but the flash drive fails to show in TI safe mode. I think my only way out is to use the entire image restore method, unless I can find a way for TI safe mode to see the flash drive.

Ray

Just had a thought...do Acronis offer a program that will clone to a HDD on another networked PC as that would solve my problem easily.

 

Well...I managed it in the end!

I was on the point of upgrading my ATI Version 11, then found that the 2009 version didn't look like it had the clone feature, so reading through some other Acronis product info, spotted the obvious solution. I was able to remove the IDE cable and power supply from the CD ROM drive, hook my new HDD up and successfully cloned my old HDD to the new HDD - job done

Thanks again for your help.

Ray

 

TI 2009 does have the Clone feature. It's under the Utilities >> Disk management section and also in the Tools menu.

I'm glad you got your drive replaced successfully. Thanks for posting your solution.

 

Missed that Acronis TI clone info on the 'blurb' page MudCrab but glad you mentioned it as have now registered Acronis TI 2009. I'm happy to support, as the various TI versions have got me out of trouble on more than one occasion.

Ray